The Seven Days: The Emergence of Lee (review)

BOOK REVIEWS91 ters of this volume. To what, one wonders, was North Carolina then really loyal? The fiercely independent spirit of her people had not vanished, nor had the consolidationist tendencies of the Davis government abated. Had North Carolinians and the Richmond authorities come to believe that Vance had resolved, or could somehow resolve, their dilemma? Professor Johnston has provided a scholarly biographical account of nearly sixty pages in which he sketches the life of his subject from the time of his birth in 1830 in western North Carolina until the close of the war. He has also adorned his first volume with lavish scholarship, his own wordage probably exceeding that of the papers themselves. The editor has set a high standard for the remainder of his task. Horace Montgomery University of Georgia The Seven Days: The Emergence of Lee. By Clifford Dowdey. (Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 1964. Pp. 368. $7.50.) At long last, here is something new on the military history of the Civil War. Clifford Dowdey has attacked the old prroblem of what caused Stonewall Jackson to dawdle so at the Seven Days, to be late at the crucial moment, to fail to press his attack against McClellan's army. Jackson's own answer was that he suffered from the bad air in the Tideland, an answer Dowdey quickly demolishes. Historians had emphasized Jackson's weariness, which is closer to the truth but does not go far enough. Dowdey, using his imagination, insight, and most of all new methods, has presented the first convincing explanation. Turning away from the usual sources, he has buried himself in the literature on the stress syndrome, and by using this psychoanalytic approach has shown that Jackson was a very sick man, even though he was suffering from a malady that had not yet been discovered, much less named. The general had been engaged in ceaseless activity for over a month and had hardly slept in a week, and under the stress he lost his judgment. Under modem conditions he would have been sent home for rest and recuperation, for he was simply not fit to command men in battle. Dowdey has summoned impressive psychiatric evidence to prove his point. A free-lance writer, Dowdey has done something the professional historians should have done long ago—he has applied modern techniques and knowledge to the Civil War and thereby broadened and deepened our understanding of that conflict. It seems to this reviewer that this sort of study is long overdue. For example, there is a great need for someone to take the findings of General S. L. A. Marshall on how Americans react to combat, based on his extensive observations and interviews during World War II and Korea, and apply them to the Civil War. In most battles , Marshall has shown, it is doubtful if even one-half—and sometimes as few as one-quarter—of the men involved ever fire their rifles. He has reached other, equally startling conclusions. We Civil War 92CIVIL WAR HISTORY military historians depend in large part on the memoirs of the participants , mostly in the form of letters or reports written shortly afterwards or occasionally in the form of newspaper and magazine articles or autobiographies written long afterwards. Now, all historians know enough to use the postwar memoirs with care, but Marshall has shown that men under combat conditions are very selective about what they remember, even immediately after the event. He points out that he interviewed a regimental commander at Bastogne during the siege, six weeks later, and then two months later. He received three entirely different versions of the action. On another subject, Marshall says flatly, "I have not known one single instance ... of a runner during combat delivering an oral message exactly as it was given him, although what he heard was not more than one concise sentence." One out of every four runners gave a message that was exactly the opposite of what he was supposed to. These and other Marshall findings should also be used to reinterpret the battles of the Civil War. Dowdey has not used all these techniques in Tiie Seven Days, but he has made a start...